Anyone want to try to explain how THIS evolved? If evolution is a series of small mutations, how would an organism go from NOT having this ability to being able to control the roach in such a manner?
Many insects and arachnids paralyze or kill their prey with poison and lay eggs in, on, or near them. This is simply an interesting variation on that.
NOTE: You may want to get an engineer to take a look at your humour chip if you take this post seriously.
Might want to have your humor chip looked at. One way to tell when your joke is utterly lame is if even you feel the need to put "P.S. The above is a joke" at the end.
they have the idea for the PERFECT game, and if only someone would listen to them!
...and all he needs is someone to take care of the minor details, like coding it, and composing the music, and doing the artwork. But the idea! It's such a great idea!
if anything, google is creating a backup network to cut down costs, create redundancy, and increase speeds.
Don't forget the other possibility, that they're adding a little insurance against the kind of shennanigans BellSouth wants to pull happening father up the chain...
I was obviously intentionally vague. I don't wish to argue the details of each concept. I doubt that either of us know enough to really compare them.
I think it's safe to say you don't know enough.
Creating something that can target a well designed ICBM with enough energy to destroy it whether it's a "nuclear pumped x-ray laser" or anything else begs the question - What else is this good for?
Nuclear warheads and ballistic rockets are relatively delicate. It doesn't take much to render one inert. punch a dime-sized hole or whack it with a mach 8 baseball sized projectile will do the trick. It's fairly obvious that the strengths of such a defense system are it ability to hit fast moving targets accurately. The level of damage they do is "enough to monkeywrench an ICBM". Any more is like swatting flies with a 4x8 sheet of plywood. Subsequently we can deduce that such systems are largely useless for any task not involving hitting small, fast moving, delicate targets.
If an "nuclear pumped x-ray laser" can start fires almost instantly in hundreds of locations
See, this is where knowing just a little about the subject would help you. Nuclear pumped x-ray lasers use a small nuclear explosion to generate the x-ray beam. They're good for one shot. And vaporizing a six inch hole in something on the ground isn't going to start a fire.
triggering nuclear winter like conditions, is that deadly enough?
Nuclear winter from conventional fires is unlikely. The theory backing it up in the case of an actual nuclear exchange is itself pretty shaky. Nuclear winter theorists also predicted catastrophic local weather changes from the oil well fires of the first Gulf War. In reality the cooler temperatures caused more precipitation, which essentially washed the smoke out of the air. Nuclear winter is weak theory.
If this device can also be used for instantaneous precision strikes then it's far more likely to be used than ICBMs which luckily have done nothing but maintain a state of mutually assured destruction so far.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who simply analyzes the problem space (i.e. what does it take to kill an ICBM in flight) that the solution has little application as a weapon.
Bizarre devices that add hardened layers to teeth seems like the wrong way to go. I want to know when the FDA is going to approve the modified streptococcus mutans bacteria they developed at U of Florida. Strep M lives in your mouth naturally. When it eats sugar, it excretes lactic acid. The lactic acid is what rots your teeth. The Strep M they made at UofF has been "fixed" so that it doesn't produce lactic acid. The way you use it is simple. They innoculate your mouth with the new Strep M and instruct you to eat lots of sugar. The new Strep M quickly displaces the natural Strep M. So far, tests show that the natural, damaging Strep M doesn't come back. No electricity, no gel; the major source of tooth decay is simply eliminated. More here
Results are consistently an irrelevant mish-mash of blogs and online forums where the keywords showed up once days, weeks, or months ago. Relevant results do show up, but they're scattered amongst the trash, usually several pages in. Not impressed.
When you get serious about reducing the chance of a missile getting through you start thinking about more powerful and experimental systems. It's these that I am referring to. It's difficult to reliably blast apart many, well designed airborne ICBMs. Such a problem requires speed, power and precision which are the ingredients for a good missile defense system and a good weapon.
What an extraordinarily vague explanation. Missile defense systems, be they small kinetic kill vehicles or nuclear pumped x-ray lasers or whatever, are not particularly good offensive weapons. Give me a specific example of one of the proposed defense systems that would be (in your own words) "potentially deadlier than any nuclear weapon".
Well, you say they will have different IR signatures.. of course they will. But what kind of differences? I mean, if you encounter 10 different objects with 10 different signatures, how do you tell which are real.
They're not arbitrarily different. A thin mylar shell sparsely filled with gas has a distinctly different IR signature from a dense, massive nuclear warhead of the same shape. Mylar decoy technology was developed decades ago to defeat radar based tracking. The sensitivity and discrimination of IR sensors has advanced quite a bit since the famously fudged test of 1998
You can't just say they differ by IR, and claim that they can be discrimiated against.Remember, you don't know what they will look like compared to the real one(s).
Why not? Are they prevented from inflating MIRV-shaped mylar balloons and comparing their IR characteristics to those of a real MIRV? Really, "decoys" are not sophisticated at all. They're literally inflatable dummies. They do know the difference. The key is getting a sensitive enough IR sensor in place to see it. 10 years ago, that was impossible. Now, who's to say it's not?
I will admit I don't have personal knowledge of this, this is from attending a lecture Postol gave, who has serious credentials in ballistics
Dr Postol's criticisms, while legitimate, are of a test eight years ago. To suggest nothing has changed since then is absurd.
He also seemed to have turned out to be largely correct in the scud affair, so I don't think you can really write him off as a lunatic.
Different circumstances there. The Patriot/SCUD thing was ridiculous. Patriot was never designed to intercept ballistic missiles, and no amount of software patching could change that. Pointing out the Army/Raytheon claims of "intercepts" for the empty propaganda they were is commendable, but it hardly lends one automatic credibility on all things ABM. My father, an engineer who worked on the EKV project as recently as 2002, had nothing but scorn for the claims of SCUD intercepts-- and he says EKV works. Who to believe? The guy working on the EKV who wants to see it succeed, possibly to the point of myopia; or the guy who hasn't worked directly in the field for over 20 years, in the days of the MX missile, has nothing to point to other than a fudged test 8 years ago and a bunch of wartime propaganda 16 years ago, and freely and loudly proclaims his philosophical opposition to the very idea of ballistic missile defense? Honestly, I don't know. Forced to choose, though, I'd have to say that even if there's no workable system right now, the unstoppable march of technology pretty much guarantees there will be.
The anti-missle will be armed with smaller, higher-velocity rockets to shoot at the missle to:
1) Make the missle prematurely detonate
2) Destroy the missle's thrusting capability
3) EMF jam the missle
Actually, the kinetic kill vehicles are pretty much designed to
4) whack the nuclear warhead hard enough to damage its detonation systems, turning it into a very expensive lump or lumps of mildly radioactive falling space junk. Nuclear weapons are very delicate, requiring precise timing and near perfect structural integrity to detonate successfully. There's simply no way 1) would ever happen. The boost phase is long finished and the warhead is in the unpowered ballistic phase by the time intercept happens, so 2) is right out. As for 3) ECM (which is what I assume you meant by EMF), a separated warhead is an unguided ballistic munition (the 'B' in 'ICBM'). ECM is about as pointless against a reentry vehicle as it is against an artillery shell.
What would give an engineer with no paycheck at stake in the matter any confidence that, as you assert, this is not a question of technological possibility?
The fact that none of the test failures so far have been the result of the core systems failing to function. So far the failures have been due to a broken cooling line, a rocket motor malfunction, loading of incorrect navigational star charts, and dust contamination of seeker heads. All of those failures are due to untimely and unfortunate faults in older, proven technology. Bench and ground tests of the individual "new technology" components indicate that if they could get a test to go off without something in the mundane supporting technology crapping out, it'd work. The technology hasn't had a chance to fail in a test yet, as some aspect of the testing apparatus itself has failed during every test. As a Pentagon advisor answered when asked if these failures show there's no way to make an effective ABM system, "The overall program has not tested successfully. [Until it does], there's no there there."
They knew that anything that could take down an ICBM, especially one designed to be difficult to shoot down, would be faster, more precise and potentially deadlier than any nuclear weapon.
What? Are you really not only suggesting that anti-missile systems have any value as ground-attack weapons, but that they postentially outclass ICBMs? That makes no sense. Faster than ICBMs? Obviously. More precise? Undoubtedly. Potentially deadlier than a nuclear weapon? Not a chance. No anti-ICBM system ever proposed has been capable of carrying an explosive payload larger than the target it's designed to take out-- in fact, most of the ICBM intercept munitions designs have been kinetic kill vehicles, i.e. destroying ICBMs via direct impact, with no warhead at all. Furthermore, the design of an anti-missile guidance system is completely unlike the guidance system of an SSM. Even if you wanted to fire one at a surface target you'd be hard pressed to get a supercooled IR sensor to lock on to a hot (relative to an ICBM reentry vehicle) building against a similarly hot background.
I'd love to see a quote from a former Soviet supporting what you claim. Surely you have one, right?
Or, you know, it could just be referring to Mitochondria
Well yeah, it's patently obvious that the biological basis of midichlorians is a poorly disguised knock-off of mitochondria. The crackpot theory is more about the philosophical aspect of the force, i.e. that capacity for Jedi powers are something you are born with, rather than something anyone can achieve through study.
And how about the wing of the FBI that investiages kidnappings? If your child is kidnapped, you won't appreciate that?
How about the FBI department that handles serial killers?
Very commendable, but neither crime is common enough to warrant the creation of a huge federal police force. Despite what movies like Silence of the Lambs would have you believe, serial killers and kidnappers are more often caught by local law enforcement, not the FBI.
Do ships in Star Wars have navigational deflectors like they do in Star Trek ?
Of course. Like the man said, even sublight navigation would be very short and end badly without some way to deflect small physical objects. There is no specific mention of "navigational deflectors", but that's largely because Star Wars writing tends to be less about the "particle of the week" and pseudo-tech mumbo-jumbo. Nevertheless, particle shields do exist in the SW universe. From stardestroyer.net:
Not only are particle-shields referenced in the SWEGWT as well as every other official source, but we saw specialized particle-shields in TPM such as the Gungan "hydrostatic" field that kept water out of the Otoh Gunga underwater city-spheres as well as the "Bongo" personal watercraft. Furthermore, the canon ANH novelization clearly states that the Falcon's deflector shields saved it from instant destruction when it emerged from hyperspace into the "meteor shower" that was Alderaan.
Can laser beams travel so slowly that you can see their progress?
They're not lasers. There's a variety of speculative explanations for the name "turbolaser", most common among them being semantic drift-- i.e. a turbolaser is no more a laser than one of us "dialing" or "hanging up" a cell phone involves spinning a numbered plastic dial or hanging a heavy earpiece on a spring loaded hook. From StarDestroyer.net:
Turbolasers fire intense blasts of energy at their targets. There is some debate as to whether turbolasers are lasers or some sort of particle-beam weapon such as a plasma cannon (either function would be consistent with the word "turbolaser"). The SWVD states that blasters and turbolasers "use high-energy gas as ammunition, activated by a power cell and converted into plasma. The plasma is released from a magnetic bottle effect to fire through collimating components as a coherent energy bolt". Obviously, this strongly suggests that the plasma-weapon interpretation of turbolaser operating principles is valid.
Can mobs of various primitive, semi-sentient beings repeatedly defeat large imperial armies (presumably with state of the art training and equipment), by throwing random objects at them?
Training: According to the SWE, stormtroopers live in a totally disciplined, militaristic environment, and their intense dedication and training means that they cannot be bribed or blackmailed. Their marksmanship is generally very good and is sometimes superb. If you monitor their combat effectiveness in ANH, TESB, and ROTJ, you will note that they regularly score hits at ranges of more than 20 metres while shooting from the hip, which is as much as anyone can reasonably expect. One stormtrooper missed Han Solo's head by less than an inch in the ANH detention centre battle, and stormtroopers hit Leia and R2D2 with snap-shots from all the way across the clearing in ROTJ. They also inflicted heavy casualties on the Ewoks in ROTJ despite the Ewoks' advantages of surprise, terrain familiarity, large numbers of traps, small size, and camouflage colouration.
In fact, they were clearly and decisively winning the battle despite being caught unawares without any heavy weapons or preparation (there is a strong possibility that their helmet threat identification systems didn't even pick up on the Ewoks at all). The film shied away from showing most of the Ewok casualties for obvious reasons (much as early WW2 propaganda footage glossed over the magnitude of D-Day casualties), but the novelization made it quite clear that after the complacent troops were ambushed, they quickly regained their composure and began to inflict heavy casualties, despite the forested terrain (which is naturally hostile to high-tech warfare) and their poorly chosen white suits (camouflage suits are also available, but they didn't use them).
Can (a)ships exploding in space not only make a lot of noise, but also (b)not annihilate other ships in close proximity?
(a) The explosion sound is either dubbed in later by the persons assembling historical footage with no sound, or it is the sound of EM noise from turbolaser hits heard and recorded via the common "guard" frequency of all ship radios. Yeah, cheap cop out arguments, but they're vaguely plausible. If you're going to attack the realism, you have to work from the premise that the footage was taken by combat photographers and put together by imperial or rebel propaganda departments.
(b) Apparantly so. They have shield technology, so why not?
Can you really cover the same distance in varying numbers of parallax seconds?
For the famous "Kessel run/parsecs" quote, it has been explained that the run in question is littered with an assortment of dangerous stellar objects. The safest
I nearly walked out on Episode I because of them. Reducing The Force to a symbiotic critter in your bloodstream is just plain wrong. I don't know what kind of crack Lucas was smoking when he came up with that concept.
One crackpot theory I've heard is that "midichlorians", which you apparently get from your mother, are a thinly veiled parallel to the Jews-- their "god's chosen people" stuff-- and the matrilinear inheritance rule in orthodox Judaism. Sounds like typical "Jews run Hollywood" conspiracy theory to me.
Whatever it is, I tatally agree. Midichlorians took what was once an immensely gratifying bit of play-mysticism that was theoretically accessible to all, wherein any child with sufficient imagination could see themselves developing Jedi powers through hard work and practice, and reduced it to "either you got the bugs in yer blood, or you don't". One of many ways that jackass Lucas took our childhood dreams and smeared crap all over 'em.
So presumably heavy armour (like on the AT-AT walker Luke had to use a grenade on) is made from Chuck Norris? Awesome.
Nah. AT-AT armor is incredibly tough, but not lightsaber proof. Watch the scene again. Luke cut open the belly access hatch with his lightsaber and threw a grenade inside.
why'd yall have to go and blab about this? don't you think the people who most benefit from this loophole could learn by word of mouth?
No. The chinese government isn't a bunch of idiots (in the purely technical sense, at least). There's no effective way to inform a significant fraction of the populace without also informing the gov't stooges. The best tactic is expose exploit after exploit as publicly as possible with the result being that there are too many people exploiting too many variations to effectively block everything. Really, the notion of "keeping it secret" is simply a variation on "security through obscurity". We all know how effective that is, particularly when dealing with large groups of people "in the know".
Maybe I'm out of touch, but what does Cisco have already in the home entertainment market?
Just off the top of my head, I know they own Scientific Atlanta, which is pretty much the big gun of set-top CATV boxes. They've lost a little to Motorola in the digital cable area, but they're still a major player.
There is another thread on an RPG form which I won't mention because I don't want to Slashdot them called "Creepiest Person You've Ever Gamed With", which has some of the worst examples of disturbingly socially except gamers
Heh. I found the thread. I just finished reading "Deadlands in Cannibal Country with Larry" and the Ruptured Halfling story. I haven't gotten to the Brazilian Death Squad story yet (250+ pages of posts there and I'm on page FIVE), but the ones so far are a hoot. It's disturbing that I recognize most of those misfits... but I know the ones in the story are different guys than the ones I knew. Apparently there are certain repeating archetypes, many of them very disturbing...
Nobody would build a hybrid with a 120V socket capable to drive power tools and a microwave. That's because it would kill some of the same company's other business: Portable generators, regular cars, trucks and SUVs. (Not to mention the housing business since you could live in your car in style!)
Nobody builds a hybrid with a 120V socket because they run off DC. The battery pack on a Prius (for example) puts out about 200VDC through an inverter that converts it to around 500VAC for the drive motors. Tell me where in that circuit you're going to wire in a 120VAC socket. The reason they don't have them is because they'd require a second custom designed inverter for the sole purpose of supplying 120VAC. Most hybrid purchasers aren't looking for a car that they can plug a freakin' microwave into, so it's no surprise the manufacturer didn't bother.
You won't see a solar rechargeable Cell phone/MP3/Flashlight/am~fm radio/garage door openner/Car key for at least 40 years. Why? because it would kill the disposable battery business.
Yeah, that's it. It's certainly not because a solar charging system would add a huge new level of unnecessary complexity to the design; not because decent capacity rechargeable batteries require charging voltages higher than you can reasonably get out of a postage stamp sized solar cell; not because some of said devices suck more amps than can reasonably be replenished by anything less than a 6"x12" solar panel; not because car keys, garage door clickers, etc. seldom spend any time in the sun; not because it would add a whole new category of idiotic tech support calls from people who think their phone should recharge after 5 minutes under a fluorescent light or that covering the solar panel with one of those "antenna booster" stickers should make it charge faster; no, it's clearly a conspiracy by the disposable battery cartels!
BTW: did you know that a AA has more juice than a C or D cell! look at the specs on the rechargeables.
As others have noted, no, it doesn't. You need to look at the specs. Look for "mAH", or "milliamp-hours". If you're comparing NiMH cells to alkaline, you should additionally multiply the mAH rating times the voltage to get milliwatt-hours, as NiMH batteries run at 1.2V and alkaline at 1.5V.
The DM is a frequent poster (and moderator) at a popular RPG board which shall not be named for fear of Slashdotting. He runs games at cons. The other guy was in fact an actor, not the other way around. He doesn't know anything about gaming, but his acting abilities helped him there.
Actually, that explains a lot. That explains the GenCon shirt, at least. That being the case, I'm convinced that if he refrained from hamming it up so horribly and just acted like himself it would have come across better. But that might've been hitting too close to home. Most guys who play seem to be under the impression that it's other gamers who are freaky nerds....
Seriously. Of course they're just acting like nerds! That's precisely what makes it so funny!
But that's what makes it so lame, they're obvious just acting like nerds. The dude in the glasses couldn't face the camera lens without affecting an exaggerated voice, corny flamboyant hand gestures, and bizarre facial distortions. He was more interested in mugging for the camera than acting like a real nerd. Also they liberally mixed goth, LARP, and RPG themes for purely comedic purposes when in real life the subcultures are not only distinct, but often regard one another with disdain! I understand that it's meant to be a "mockumentary", and is supposed to be funny. The writing and acting were so weak, though, that it wasn't.
I realize it sounds like nit-picking, but seriously, this is a weak offering by a couple amateurs. The classic "I cast magic missile" bit by the Dead Alewives is an example of excellent writing. The characters are absurd, but totally believeable. These guys? I couldn't put aside the painfully obvious fact that they're acting long anough to really feel the characters-- not that they were even particularly accessible, believeable characters on paper either.
Slashdot Mirror
Many insects and arachnids paralyze or kill their prey with poison and lay eggs in, on, or near them. This is simply an interesting variation on that.
Actually it wasn't, but the above is.
Might want to have your humor chip looked at. One way to tell when your joke is utterly lame is if even you feel the need to put "P.S. The above is a joke" at the end.
Heh. sure pal.
Don't forget the other possibility, that they're adding a little insurance against the kind of shennanigans BellSouth wants to pull happening father up the chain...
I think it's safe to say you don't know enough.
Creating something that can target a well designed ICBM with enough energy to destroy it whether it's a "nuclear pumped x-ray laser" or anything else begs the question - What else is this good for?
Nuclear warheads and ballistic rockets are relatively delicate. It doesn't take much to render one inert. punch a dime-sized hole or whack it with a mach 8 baseball sized projectile will do the trick. It's fairly obvious that the strengths of such a defense system are it ability to hit fast moving targets accurately. The level of damage they do is "enough to monkeywrench an ICBM". Any more is like swatting flies with a 4x8 sheet of plywood. Subsequently we can deduce that such systems are largely useless for any task not involving hitting small, fast moving, delicate targets.
If an "nuclear pumped x-ray laser" can start fires almost instantly in hundreds of locations
See, this is where knowing just a little about the subject would help you. Nuclear pumped x-ray lasers use a small nuclear explosion to generate the x-ray beam. They're good for one shot. And vaporizing a six inch hole in something on the ground isn't going to start a fire.
triggering nuclear winter like conditions, is that deadly enough?
Nuclear winter from conventional fires is unlikely. The theory backing it up in the case of an actual nuclear exchange is itself pretty shaky. Nuclear winter theorists also predicted catastrophic local weather changes from the oil well fires of the first Gulf War. In reality the cooler temperatures caused more precipitation, which essentially washed the smoke out of the air. Nuclear winter is weak theory.
If this device can also be used for instantaneous precision strikes then it's far more likely to be used than ICBMs which luckily have done nothing but maintain a state of mutually assured destruction so far.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who simply analyzes the problem space (i.e. what does it take to kill an ICBM in flight) that the solution has little application as a weapon.
Bizarre devices that add hardened layers to teeth seems like the wrong way to go. I want to know when the FDA is going to approve the modified streptococcus mutans bacteria they developed at U of Florida. Strep M lives in your mouth naturally. When it eats sugar, it excretes lactic acid. The lactic acid is what rots your teeth. The Strep M they made at UofF has been "fixed" so that it doesn't produce lactic acid. The way you use it is simple. They innoculate your mouth with the new Strep M and instruct you to eat lots of sugar. The new Strep M quickly displaces the natural Strep M. So far, tests show that the natural, damaging Strep M doesn't come back. No electricity, no gel; the major source of tooth decay is simply eliminated. More here
Results are consistently an irrelevant mish-mash of blogs and online forums where the keywords showed up once days, weeks, or months ago. Relevant results do show up, but they're scattered amongst the trash, usually several pages in. Not impressed.
What an extraordinarily vague explanation. Missile defense systems, be they small kinetic kill vehicles or nuclear pumped x-ray lasers or whatever, are not particularly good offensive weapons. Give me a specific example of one of the proposed defense systems that would be (in your own words) "potentially deadlier than any nuclear weapon".
They're not arbitrarily different. A thin mylar shell sparsely filled with gas has a distinctly different IR signature from a dense, massive nuclear warhead of the same shape. Mylar decoy technology was developed decades ago to defeat radar based tracking. The sensitivity and discrimination of IR sensors has advanced quite a bit since the famously fudged test of 1998
You can't just say they differ by IR, and claim that they can be discrimiated against.Remember, you don't know what they will look like compared to the real one(s).
Why not? Are they prevented from inflating MIRV-shaped mylar balloons and comparing their IR characteristics to those of a real MIRV? Really, "decoys" are not sophisticated at all. They're literally inflatable dummies. They do know the difference. The key is getting a sensitive enough IR sensor in place to see it. 10 years ago, that was impossible. Now, who's to say it's not?
I will admit I don't have personal knowledge of this, this is from attending a lecture Postol gave, who has serious credentials in ballistics
Dr Postol's criticisms, while legitimate, are of a test eight years ago. To suggest nothing has changed since then is absurd.
He also seemed to have turned out to be largely correct in the scud affair, so I don't think you can really write him off as a lunatic.
Different circumstances there. The Patriot/SCUD thing was ridiculous. Patriot was never designed to intercept ballistic missiles, and no amount of software patching could change that. Pointing out the Army/Raytheon claims of "intercepts" for the empty propaganda they were is commendable, but it hardly lends one automatic credibility on all things ABM. My father, an engineer who worked on the EKV project as recently as 2002, had nothing but scorn for the claims of SCUD intercepts-- and he says EKV works. Who to believe? The guy working on the EKV who wants to see it succeed, possibly to the point of myopia; or the guy who hasn't worked directly in the field for over 20 years, in the days of the MX missile, has nothing to point to other than a fudged test 8 years ago and a bunch of wartime propaganda 16 years ago, and freely and loudly proclaims his philosophical opposition to the very idea of ballistic missile defense? Honestly, I don't know. Forced to choose, though, I'd have to say that even if there's no workable system right now, the unstoppable march of technology pretty much guarantees there will be.
The anti-missle will be armed with smaller, higher-velocity rockets to shoot at the missle to:
1) Make the missle prematurely detonate
2) Destroy the missle's thrusting capability
3) EMF jam the missle
Actually, the kinetic kill vehicles are pretty much designed to
4) whack the nuclear warhead hard enough to damage its detonation systems, turning it into a very expensive lump or lumps of mildly radioactive falling space junk. Nuclear weapons are very delicate, requiring precise timing and near perfect structural integrity to detonate successfully. There's simply no way 1) would ever happen. The boost phase is long finished and the warhead is in the unpowered ballistic phase by the time intercept happens, so 2) is right out. As for 3) ECM (which is what I assume you meant by EMF), a separated warhead is an unguided ballistic munition (the 'B' in 'ICBM'). ECM is about as pointless against a reentry vehicle as it is against an artillery shell.
The fact that none of the test failures so far have been the result of the core systems failing to function. So far the failures have been due to a broken cooling line, a rocket motor malfunction, loading of incorrect navigational star charts, and dust contamination of seeker heads. All of those failures are due to untimely and unfortunate faults in older, proven technology. Bench and ground tests of the individual "new technology" components indicate that if they could get a test to go off without something in the mundane supporting technology crapping out, it'd work. The technology hasn't had a chance to fail in a test yet, as some aspect of the testing apparatus itself has failed during every test. As a Pentagon advisor answered when asked if these failures show there's no way to make an effective ABM system, "The overall program has not tested successfully. [Until it does], there's no there there."
What? Are you really not only suggesting that anti-missile systems have any value as ground-attack weapons, but that they postentially outclass ICBMs? That makes no sense. Faster than ICBMs? Obviously. More precise? Undoubtedly. Potentially deadlier than a nuclear weapon? Not a chance. No anti-ICBM system ever proposed has been capable of carrying an explosive payload larger than the target it's designed to take out-- in fact, most of the ICBM intercept munitions designs have been kinetic kill vehicles, i.e. destroying ICBMs via direct impact, with no warhead at all. Furthermore, the design of an anti-missile guidance system is completely unlike the guidance system of an SSM. Even if you wanted to fire one at a surface target you'd be hard pressed to get a supercooled IR sensor to lock on to a hot (relative to an ICBM reentry vehicle) building against a similarly hot background.
I'd love to see a quote from a former Soviet supporting what you claim. Surely you have one, right?
Well yeah, it's patently obvious that the biological basis of midichlorians is a poorly disguised knock-off of mitochondria. The crackpot theory is more about the philosophical aspect of the force, i.e. that capacity for Jedi powers are something you are born with, rather than something anyone can achieve through study.
Very commendable, but neither crime is common enough to warrant the creation of a huge federal police force. Despite what movies like Silence of the Lambs would have you believe, serial killers and kidnappers are more often caught by local law enforcement, not the FBI.
They're not lasers. There's a variety of speculative explanations for the name "turbolaser", most common among them being semantic drift-- i.e. a turbolaser is no more a laser than one of us "dialing" or "hanging up" a cell phone involves spinning a numbered plastic dial or hanging a heavy earpiece on a spring loaded hook. From StarDestroyer.net:
Can mobs of various primitive, semi-sentient beings repeatedly defeat large imperial armies (presumably with state of the art training and equipment), by throwing random objects at them?
(from StarDestroyer.net:
Can (a)ships exploding in space not only make a lot of noise, but also (b)not annihilate other ships in close proximity?
(a) The explosion sound is either dubbed in later by the persons assembling historical footage with no sound, or it is the sound of EM noise from turbolaser hits heard and recorded via the common "guard" frequency of all ship radios. Yeah, cheap cop out arguments, but they're vaguely plausible. If you're going to attack the realism, you have to work from the premise that the footage was taken by combat photographers and put together by imperial or rebel propaganda departments.
(b) Apparantly so. They have shield technology, so why not?
Can you really cover the same distance in varying numbers of parallax seconds?
For the famous "Kessel run/parsecs" quote, it has been explained that the run in question is littered with an assortment of dangerous stellar objects. The safest
One crackpot theory I've heard is that "midichlorians", which you apparently get from your mother, are a thinly veiled parallel to the Jews-- their "god's chosen people" stuff-- and the matrilinear inheritance rule in orthodox Judaism. Sounds like typical "Jews run Hollywood" conspiracy theory to me.
Whatever it is, I tatally agree. Midichlorians took what was once an immensely gratifying bit of play-mysticism that was theoretically accessible to all, wherein any child with sufficient imagination could see themselves developing Jedi powers through hard work and practice, and reduced it to "either you got the bugs in yer blood, or you don't". One of many ways that jackass Lucas took our childhood dreams and smeared crap all over 'em.
Nah. AT-AT armor is incredibly tough, but not lightsaber proof. Watch the scene again. Luke cut open the belly access hatch with his lightsaber and threw a grenade inside.
No. The chinese government isn't a bunch of idiots (in the purely technical sense, at least). There's no effective way to inform a significant fraction of the populace without also informing the gov't stooges. The best tactic is expose exploit after exploit as publicly as possible with the result being that there are too many people exploiting too many variations to effectively block everything. Really, the notion of "keeping it secret" is simply a variation on "security through obscurity". We all know how effective that is, particularly when dealing with large groups of people "in the know".
Just off the top of my head, I know they own Scientific Atlanta, which is pretty much the big gun of set-top CATV boxes. They've lost a little to Motorola in the digital cable area, but they're still a major player.
Heh. I found the thread. I just finished reading "Deadlands in Cannibal Country with Larry" and the Ruptured Halfling story. I haven't gotten to the Brazilian Death Squad story yet (250+ pages of posts there and I'm on page FIVE), but the ones so far are a hoot. It's disturbing that I recognize most of those misfits... but I know the ones in the story are different guys than the ones I knew. Apparently there are certain repeating archetypes, many of them very disturbing...
Nobody builds a hybrid with a 120V socket because they run off DC. The battery pack on a Prius (for example) puts out about 200VDC through an inverter that converts it to around 500VAC for the drive motors. Tell me where in that circuit you're going to wire in a 120VAC socket. The reason they don't have them is because they'd require a second custom designed inverter for the sole purpose of supplying 120VAC. Most hybrid purchasers aren't looking for a car that they can plug a freakin' microwave into, so it's no surprise the manufacturer didn't bother.
You won't see a solar rechargeable Cell phone/MP3/Flashlight/am~fm radio/garage door openner/Car key for at least 40 years. Why? because it would kill the disposable battery business.
Yeah, that's it. It's certainly not because a solar charging system would add a huge new level of unnecessary complexity to the design; not because decent capacity rechargeable batteries require charging voltages higher than you can reasonably get out of a postage stamp sized solar cell; not because some of said devices suck more amps than can reasonably be replenished by anything less than a 6"x12" solar panel; not because car keys, garage door clickers, etc. seldom spend any time in the sun; not because it would add a whole new category of idiotic tech support calls from people who think their phone should recharge after 5 minutes under a fluorescent light or that covering the solar panel with one of those "antenna booster" stickers should make it charge faster; no, it's clearly a conspiracy by the disposable battery cartels!
BTW: did you know that a AA has more juice than a C or D cell! look at the specs on the rechargeables.
As others have noted, no, it doesn't. You need to look at the specs. Look for "mAH", or "milliamp-hours". If you're comparing NiMH cells to alkaline, you should additionally multiply the mAH rating times the voltage to get milliwatt-hours, as NiMH batteries run at 1.2V and alkaline at 1.5V.
Actually, that explains a lot. That explains the GenCon shirt, at least. That being the case, I'm convinced that if he refrained from hamming it up so horribly and just acted like himself it would have come across better. But that might've been hitting too close to home. Most guys who play seem to be under the impression that it's other gamers who are freaky nerds....
But that's what makes it so lame, they're obvious just acting like nerds. The dude in the glasses couldn't face the camera lens without affecting an exaggerated voice, corny flamboyant hand gestures, and bizarre facial distortions. He was more interested in mugging for the camera than acting like a real nerd. Also they liberally mixed goth, LARP, and RPG themes for purely comedic purposes when in real life the subcultures are not only distinct, but often regard one another with disdain! I understand that it's meant to be a "mockumentary", and is supposed to be funny. The writing and acting were so weak, though, that it wasn't.
I realize it sounds like nit-picking, but seriously, this is a weak offering by a couple amateurs. The classic "I cast magic missile" bit by the Dead Alewives is an example of excellent writing. The characters are absurd, but totally believeable. These guys? I couldn't put aside the painfully obvious fact that they're acting long anough to really feel the characters-- not that they were even particularly accessible, believeable characters on paper either.